TikTok is raising the age requirement for hosting live streams on its platform and is also launching live streams for adults, the company announced Monday. Currently, you must be 16 or older to host a live stream. As of November 23, users must be 18 years old to go live on the platform. TikTok says the change is part of its ongoing work to keep the community safe.
As for the adult live streams, TikTok plans to roll it out in the coming weeks. The official rollout comes as the company began testing the ability to restrict live streams to viewers 18 and older in July. It’s important to note that TikTok’s new 18+ live stream restriction setting is no way for users to broadcast adult content, as the content is still subject to the app’s policies. Instead, it’s a way for creators to prevent minors from encountering content that’s aimed at an adult audience or that’s uninteresting to them.
“We plan to introduce a new way for creators to choose whether they prefer to reach only an adult audience in their LIVE,” the company said in a blog post. “For example, maybe a comedy routine is better suited to people over the age of 18. Or a host may plan to talk about a difficult life experience and they would feel more comfortable knowing the conversation is limited to adults. “
The new setting comes a few months after TikTok said it wanted to start identifying what content is appropriate for younger and older teens versus adults. TikTok previously said it was developing a system to identify and restrict certain types of content by teens, and that it would ask creators to indicate when their content is more appropriate for an adult audience.
TikTok had said it wouldn’t go as far as having “displayable” ratings or labels on TikTok videos, allowing people to see at a glance the age-appropriate nature of a particular piece of content. Instead, it said it planned to rely on backend categorization and rely on creators to tag their own content in some way, hence the new adult live streams.
Additionally, TikTok is introducing an updated version of its keyword filtering tool that will send people a reminder and suggest new keywords they may want to add to their filter list. Creators can already use the app’s keyword filtering tool to limit comments they don’t consider appropriate, but this update takes it one step further.
“To do this, the tool looks at the content a creator usually removes from their LIVE, sees similar words in these comments, and then suggests that the host may want to add these words to their filter list,” explains TikTok in its blog post. “When we tested this feature, we found that keyword filtering users nearly doubled when viewing the most popular LIVE creators.”
TikTok is also introducing a new feature called “Multi-Guest”, which allows hosts to go live with up to five other people using a grid or panel layout. The new feature can be used to host tutorial videos, respond to questions, or just share a moment together. Once the live stream starts, creators can tap the three dots to change various settings, such as flipping the camera, adding effects and stickers, filtering comments, and adding moderators.